Daniels started selling corn at the farmers market today. The ears are small, but they threw in extra to make up for it. I attached the wagon to the bike and we hit them early. Got 4 dozen. I am excited to try the new Lee’s corn cutter.

Bruschetta sure tastes great with stuff off the grill. Theresa has been making it for years and has it down. Our tomato plants are huge this year so we will be enjoying it often. She uses tomatoes, Garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, salt, and some parm cheese. We use Le Quartier bread since it is a bit warm to be baking. Theresa infuses olive oil with garlic and basil and lightly brushes the bread with some shredded parmesan.

In the pic above on the right is some risotto. Theresa has that down really good too.

Since it is nice out and we are always looking to create something new and a bit healthier, we figured some foil wrapped meals would be fun to try. Figured chicken would be a good meat for this since Theresa is not fond of seafood. We really like the flavor for a good seared piece of meat, so the idea was to partially cook the chicken in a very flavorful pouch and then finish it off on the grill.

Was kind of hard to decide what to include in the foil with the chicken. We were thinking something like a marinade coating the chicken and some fresh vegetables to impart their flavor.

Decided to use carrots, celery, onion, red pepper, and garlic for the main flavors. I put all of those along with some olive oil, basil, and lemon juice into a cup and used my stick blender to make up a goop to coat the chicken.

Made up some bread. I am so loving making this bread. It is soooo good. I need to figure out how to cook it on the grill somehow this summer. As long as the windows are open I will keep making it though.

Halved fingerling potatoes and carrot slices all gooped up will be our side.

I had a monster chicken bewb and flattened it and let it soak in the goop for about 30 minutes. Then made a bed of the vegetables on the top and bottom with all the goop in there along with some butter.

Both packs flipped a bunch and peeled the foil on the chicken. It smells amazing. The chicken looked done and I for some strange reason took it into the house and cut it in half to see if it was done. Would have been a great time to use my new fancy instant read digi thermometer. Doh. It was still raw on the inside so back on the grill it went.

The potato and carrots were done perfectly so we sat down to eat…….

Meh…. on all accounts. Hardly any flavor for both foil packs. The chicken only had a slight bit of flavor and the potato/carrots were bland as heck. It was kind of crushing because of how much work went into the meal with so many ingredients.

Things we learned:
* the chicken was not in the pack with all the veg long enough. It did not have enough time to pick up the flavors
* I should of tenderized the bewb more and maybe cut the chicken up to allow it to get more flavor
* more juice/marinade would not just impart more flavor, but would of steamed it more
* it is the flavor that counts, not the char from direct cooking

Not sure what the next foil pack adventure will consist of, but we are determined to keep at it till we get it right. Doing this on the grill reduces the dishes we need to do and it just awesome to be grilling again. We have used Itilian dressing in a foil pack with chicken before and it is super awesome. Will make my own dressing for the next one. If you guys have any good recepies for foil packs on the grill I would love to hear from ya.

Borky Lou 3:52
IMG_0876 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
figured out a secret last week. put the basil on top of the sauce but under the cheese to keep the flavor in there and not let it burn

Spkthed 3:54
whoa, that’s fascinating…

Loves me those Le Quartier pizza crusts. Really light sauce, fresh mozz, garlic salt, black pepper, and mushrooms and olives that pee all over the pizza and make me have to soak it up with a napkin

A week early, but we decided to do it anyways. Headed tot he Old Cheney farmers market and picked up some good stuff. Only one place was selling corn and it was only $5 a dozen and we ended up with 17 ears to make up for the size. Boiled in the brewing equipment outside, tossed into a cooler full of ice, and zipped the corn. Got 3 pretty good servings out of it because we figure that will make us through the week. It is corn season and we are ready to go.

Next week the holy grail of sweet corn producers around these parts and we are not ready. Daniels sweet corn is the absolute best. They pick the morning of sale and hydro cool the corn to 38 degrees from picking time for sale that day.We still need a better way of storing it and after asking around on the forum and the web we found you do not can corn, you freeze. Now we froze our crop last year and learned about freezer burn. We are awaiting our next payday to get a vacuum sealer food saver.

Basil, gonna wait till we get the sealer to send.

Headed to the Old Cheney farmers market again this weekend to pick up 3 more dozen sweet corn from Daniels Produce. It is so good, oh man. I asked JR of Hollenbeck where to get my sweet corn from and he said without question it is the best at the farmers market.

From their site:

We preserve the natural sugar in every ear so our corn taste as sweet and fresh as if it just came off the stalk. All sweet corn is hydro cooled with 38 degree water within 30 minutes or less, after picking

That pretty cool. We only have about 3 more weeks to get more so I guess we will be stocking up on tons of this corn. We have had it with almost every meal this last week and I am still craving it right now. Shucking, boiling, ice bath, and cutting the corn off the cob is a bit of work, but so worth it.

Corn likes kicking it next to other corns. The three big plants I had in the main yard were not close enough to the main corn plantation to get adequate germination. Still I took what I got from my 8 corn plants this eve and got some killer corn. Enough ears for 3 sides of corn, and sweet as heck. Darn good for being something I fricking grew.
Would I do it again? No
But at least I grew my own corn and am darn P-roud.

It is too easy to buy 3 dozen sweet corn from the farmers market for me to deal with growing corn again. Still uber proud for actually eating corn I grew from seed. It is as close to animal husbandry I will ever achieve I bet.
We will not ever give up on normal garden stuff though. Fresh tomaters, herbs, cuces, and peppers cannot be beat.

My friend hooked me up with a big ol sack of corn for free.

Took it home and shucked it and cut off the not ready / want to eat bits.

Boiled them for about 4 minutes and then dropped them in an ice bath.

We borrowed a Lee corn cutter from Theresa’s parents. Lynn said the cutter was older than Theresa. The package is mostly shredded, but still cool. This thing will cut the kernels off, shred, and cream corn if you want. We just wanted the kernels cut off.

The thing is really efficient. It has a slightly dull blade that grabs the kernel and pulls it out of the husk. We got quite the haul.

Here is a piece I ran through our mandoline slicer. Lots of junk gets mixed into the mess and the kernels are not whole.

Sucky bagged it all up and will have corn when we want. We plan on getting lots more here soon. Gotta have the good stuff over winter.

Tomatoes are ready to eat and Theresa just loves making bruschetta. We have some small and large tomatoes and dice them up. Add some fresh basil, parsley, shredded garlic, balsamic vinegar, and fresh shredded parm cheese. The toasty bits have some garlic and basil infused olive oil brushed on them as well as parm cheese. mmmmmmm………….